


Moving Forward

by romanticalgirl



Category: Brothers & Sisters
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-19
Updated: 2013-04-19
Packaged: 2017-12-08 22:12:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/766609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanticalgirl/pseuds/romanticalgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moving forward steals all your breath</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moving Forward

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the [](http://femgenficathon.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://femgenficathon.livejournal.com/)**femgenficathon** based on this quote: _There is really nothing more to say -- except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how._ \-- Toni Morrison.
> 
> Originally posted 8-17-07

Nora doesn’t think about it anymore. Not the why of it, anyway. She can’t think of the things that happened or what led to them. It’s too easy to blame herself, when she wants to blame William; too easy to blame William when she knows the fault lies with her.

The problem, of course, is that it was both of them and neither. And even if she knew who to blame for what, she doesn’t think it would help with the here and now, with the where she goes next. The past is sitting there, staring her in the face of her children’s eyes and his child’s eyes, and maybe it’s telling right there how she sees them. She can’t escape the past, but she doesn’t have to let it own her.

She just has to look beyond it, see them and not him in their eyes and keep moving forward.

If only it were that easy though. If only it _were_ moving forward though, instead of just running in place. If only it were a step forward once in a while instead of this headlong rush that runs her time and again into another secret, another lie.

Her life could be ‘if only’, if only she’d let it.

Instead she tries writing again and putting it all into words. Not the betrayal and the death and the sudden upheaval of her life, though that’s the background. Instead it’s the little moments that she seeks out – how coffee tastes different now, and how she can’t tell anyone that the smell of oranges in the sun makes her want to gag. She remembers when she was pregnant with Sarah how she hated pasta, and with Kevin it was a craving for pomegranates. Now her taste buds have changed again without the benefits of pregnancy, which she supposes is fitting, given that she’s got a new child in her family all the same.

The house feels bigger and smaller all at once now when she walks through it, though only the den still feels like William. All his books and trophies and such still line the walls and take up space on the bookcases, smatterings of memories she doesn’t quite have that linger like the faint scent of the cigars he swore he no longer smoked.

Another lie, but who can notice in the middle of all the rest of them?

She sits in his chair, inhaling the scent of leather and William that still seems to linger, even after all of these months. She thought it would be in their bed that it stayed, locked in the pillow she pressed to her face every night at first, clinging to whatever it was of him that was left. Instead it’s here, away from her and the kids, away from the hustle and bustle of the household. The kitchen was her kingdom and this was his.

“I wish I could hate you.” She whispers the words to the ghost that lingers, trailing her fingers over the spines of books on business and crops, on California and law. She remembers Kevin hiding in here when he was little, reading reverently from the California statutes and William laughing, telling her he was going to be a formidable lawyer if he was planning to argue state code with his sisters for violating his privacy. “But I can’t.”

It’s not loving him that makes it hard, either. It’s those times when he put his family before everything. She knows it wasn’t as often as she thought, as she would have liked. She knows all those things now, but back then it was necessary blindness. She couldn’t see it because she didn’t want to, and _that_ blame is her own.

She sees everything now, even though her children try to protect her. It’s not right that they think they need to parent her, hide things from her, coddle her. She’s not fragile, at least not in the ways they think. She’ll break, but only from her own strain, not from anything anyone else gives her. She’s stronger than any of them give her credit for, stronger than William ever knew.

That blame she places squarely on his shoulders.

“You know, William, greater men than you don’t have shrines dedicated to them.” She takes a book off the shelf and glances through it, not sure what she’s looking for or even if there’s anything to find. Pages and pages of words she doesn’t care about fan past and she shakes her head, smiling to herself. “I loved you. But I won’t pretend you were anything more than a man.”

She sets the book on the desk and leaves the room, making her way through the house to the garage and the broken down stack of boxes from Kitty’s move. She grabs a few and a roll of packing tape on her way back, pausing for a moment in the kitchen to inhale the smell of the bread she’s baking and the faint hint of coffee she brewed for Kitty and Justin barely an hour ago. Sunlight streams in and she closes her eyes, soaking it in before heading back to the den.

It’s dark compared to the rest of the house, so she opens the windows and lets the sunlight filter in. She builds the boxes and fills them quickly, a past life disappearing into tightly sealed cardboard and the scratch of a permanent marker.

Her husband’s life disappears easily, packed away neatly and leaving behind only the dusty outlines of the football signed by Joe Montana and William’s golf trophy and the stack of unread _National Geographics_. She pictures the shelves oiled to a golden glow and filled with pictures of her kids and grandkids, plans a space of honor for Tommy and Julia’s twins – two kids with four parents, three of them male. She’ll get a new chair and new curtains, and replace the large desk with something smaller, something softer. She’ll make the room hers, just like her life is hers, now that he’s not around to claim it any more.

She doesn’t know why he cheated on her, why he loved another woman, why she wasn’t enough. She doesn’t know how to go forward, and she doesn’t know how to go on.

But she does.  



End file.
